Background
She was born in Newton, Iowa, and married Arthur Jehu Stanley in 1900, living thereafter in Lincoln, Kansas.
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Bessie Stanley
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Or What Constitutes Success?), which is often incorrectly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson or Robert Louis Stevenson. Her poem was written in 1904 for a contest held in Brown Book Magazine, by George Livingston Richards Company of Boston, Massachusetts Stanley submitted the words in the form of an essay, rather than as a poem. The competition was to answer the question "What is success?" in 100 words or less.
Written in verse form, it reads: Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children.
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth"s beauty or failed to express lieutenant Who has left the world better than he found it, Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul.
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had. Whose life was an inspiration.
Whose memory a benediction.
The poem was in Bartlett"s Familiar Quotations in the 1930s or 1940s but was mysteriously removed in the 1960s. lieutenant was again included in the seventeenth edition However, it does appear in a 1911 book, More Heart Throbs, volume 2, on pages 1–2.
Bessie Anderson Stanley died in 1952, aged 73.
The verse is inscribed on her gravestone in Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas.
